The present invention relates to an oil adsorbent comprising natural fibers as a substrate thereof and to a method of producing same. The oil adsorbent of this invention possesses excellent oil absorbability with good working characteristics.
In oil tankers, oil bases, oil refineries, oil depots and the like, there frequently occur accidents including the inadvertent efflusion or leakage of stocked oil from these facilities to the surface of nearby sea or rivers. Oil adsorbents are used to adsorb and remove oil floating on the surface of the water by such accidents. In the past, oil adsorbents utilized plastics such as polypropylene, polyurethane foam and polystyrene as substrate. On burning of such plastic products after use, however, there arise various troubles, particularly in that such plastic products are difficult to ignite, and a melt of the plastic products tends to clog the passages of a furnace and the extremely high temperature generated on ignition causes damage to a furnace. Thus, disposal of such plastic products by burning requires an expensive special furnace. Further, oil adsorbents composed of atactic polypropylene or polystyrene are soluble in oil and have the disadvantage that they are swollen by absorption of oil and broken into crumbles. In practical use, therefore, a portion of the adsorbent is broken into crumbles which will scatter in the water as small pieces to be left in the water unrecovered. The oil-containing small pieces of plastics left in the water cause serious damage to aquatic resources such as fish and crustaceans.
As the known conventional plastic oil adsorbents thus incur various troubles when burnt after use, there is a great demand in recent years for development of an oil adsorbent devoid of such troubles. For this purpose, the use of natural substances as such for adsorbent is proposed instead of using harmful synthetic products. However, such natural subsances have some drawbacks in that they possess a water absorbing property and thus become submerged on actual use after a relatively short period of time, thus making themselves unsuited for practical use. In the above situations, there is still a great demand for development of a new type of oil absorbent which can overcome all of the above drawbacks in practical use.